to kick me around.practicing with manual mode and I'd like some hard criticism.I think I know what I'm doing wrong but I'd like opinions and I value everyone's here. 1st shot auto with flash, all the rest Manual

When I set them up everything looked good and I expected good results.

Do you mean, on the LCD screen?

I've found that Kodak enhances that, probably along the lines of the way it enhances low light scenes, so you can see things on it. This enhancement is a real benefit for low-light pictures, but it completely threw me the other day -- wasn't paying attention and turned on the camera in M mode with, of course, all the previous settings from taking pictures outside in the sun.

But, Iwas inside at the time - everything looked good the LCD. I snapped the picture, went to review and... black. Tried again -- LCD looked good, but the review was black. I thought the camera had died.Then I looked at the settings... turned it to Auto, and there was my picture.

Dan. Try bracketing the exposure, shutter speed or F-stop. That way you'll increase your chances of that good shot. I sometimes take 6 or 8 shots if it is a still object and then decide which one I want to keep after I see it on my computer. Some of the ones I didn't like when I reviewed them in review mode turned out to be the best ones!

Dawg. Actually I did bracket it and took probly 30 shots in different settings, got some nice ones. Iwas just puzzled about the ones i posted.After looking at all the shots I realized the sun was playing peekaboo coming in the side window and maybe thats the explanation.

TD. thanks yes Ive read that post a few times and c+p to hard copy for reference as well as DG's above explanation. One of these days it will make sense to me. The Old Man usede to tell me sometimes I needed a 2x4 on the head to learn things.Maybe he had a point there:-)